John P. Wheeler's murder and Defense Department secret cyber war ops

[Peace Patriot]

Here are two previous threads I started on the recent murder of top Defense Dept consultant, John P. Wheeler:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x134679
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x152279

I'm going to talk mostly about Wheeler's murder, because it got bumped out of the news by the AZ horrors, while I was researching it, and I have a lot to say about it. See the bottom of this post for comment on Ashley Turton's unusual death in Washington DC, on the day that her lobby client, Progress, signed a $1.3 billion deal with Duke Energy. This occurred 2 days before the AZ shootings. Wheeler was murdered about a week before the AZ shootings.

But before I discuss more about these murders, I want to note this headline from today's newsstream:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110112/ap_on_re_us/us_military_cyber_oversight

Jan 13: "Senators say military cyber ops not disclosed."

Cyber ops were precisely what John Wheeler was said to be working on at MITRE Corporation, for the Defense Department. The article reports on the dissembling before a closed Senate hearing, by a nominee for undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Michael Vickers, who tells a senator that the reason for the Defense Dept not disclosing cyberwar ops to the Senate is that such "emerging high tech operations are not specifically mentioned in the law" requiring disclosure. He said he would, of course, "if confirmed," review the law to suggest updates. (I'm trying not to type, "LOL.")

Does this not sound like a COVERUP of something that John Wheeler might have been onto? The Defense Dept was developing high tech cyber war weapons without authorization and were failing to report it to the Senate? Whose money were they using? Who were they reporting to? Sounds to me like this secret operation could produce a motive for murder. Caveat: If Wheeler was murdered over this, it could be a MITRE rival. Could be a "rogue" group in the Defense Dept, or within MITRE or other MIC corps. Could be related to Wheeler's murder in ways we can't even guess at. I'm not pointing the finger at anybody. I'm saying that a secret op, kept from the Senate, directly related to Wheeler's work, could produce a motive for murder.

And the more I find out about Wheeler's murder, the more I think that it was a sophisticated operation and had some such motive.


Information about Wheeler and his death

Not much new has come out about the Wheeler murder itself. Still no cause of death or lab report, no crime scene, no suspects. This, for one of the most important men in Washington! That alone is bizarre. But I have come across a few more possibly relevant facts and have some more thoughts on the matter. And I'm including a time-line (below).

--Wheeler was involved in investigating the Minot air base nuclear incident (Cheney trying to nuke Iran?).

--Wheeler wrote THE handbook on bio/chem weapons that was instrumental in getting them BANNED.

--Wheeler had one of the most top security clearances in the country.

--Wheeler was involved in SEC investigations.

--His last job was as a consultant for MITRE Corporation (VERY top Defense contractor--high tech & aviation) where he was working on cyber-security issues.

--Wheeler seemed to hop from job to job within the "military-industrial complex," rarely more than a year in one job--and yet had top jobs requiring a wide range of top expertise--from bio/chem weapons to nuclear safety to air space protection to SEC investigations to cyber warfare --perhaps indicating that he was some kind of "fixer" (not necessarily bad)--solver of very difficult problems; special assignments?

--Wheeler's role in Vietnam was as an aide to a general, not in combat (as far as I know), but he WAS the crucial person in getting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built. He was also heavily involved in Mother's Against Drunk Driving and other charities, and was special counsel to the CEO of Macy's during the Macy's 'turnaround.' A man of many talents.

--The story about Wheeler possibly having set off smoke bombs in his neighbor's house (long running dispute with neighbor about a new house blocking his view) seems preposterous and contrived, and the notion that he might have been murdered and his body thrown into a dumpster over this dispute also seems utterly preposterous. This straight-arrow military guy, with kudos from every quarter, with one of the top security clearances in the country, is setting off harmless smoke-bombs over a petty dispute with a neighbor?!? Come on.

--In this regard, apparently his cell phone was found in the neighbor's half-built, unoccupied house. This makes me extremely suspicious that the "smoke bomb" thing was 'smoke and mirrors'--a planted misdirection. It adds to suspicions that this was an insider and/or foreign intelligence hit.


Time-line:

Here's a basic timeline:
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110108/NEWS01/101080343/Times-and-locations-in-John-P-Wheeler-III-case

And here's a rough sequence of events (with me filling in some items, from various news sources and web sites; follow the cell phone through this narrative):

He parks his car at the Amtrak parking lot in Wilmington on Dec 13, about 10 blocks from the town center. He apparently takes a train to DC to his MITRE office, because that's where he's arrives in Wilmington from, shortly before he was killed. Over the Christmas holiday, his neighbors notice that he is not home (in nearby New Castle) but very loud TV is playing--loud enough to be annoying--day and night. (I don't know how the loud TV noise gets resolved).

He disappears off the radar just before New Year's (Dec. 28). He is last heard from in an email to his old West Point buddies in which he says that West Point should drop out of the NCAA because of the corruption in college sports. (--an interesting tidbit about his ethical stance in the world?). He then doesn't reply to one of their emails, which one of these friends thought unusual. That night, the fire dept. is called to his neighbor's house (the one with whom he was having the legal dispute) because smoke bombs had been set off in the house--harmless smoke devices of the kind used to remove wild animals. A later report says that Wheeler's cell phone was found in this house.

On Dec 28, Wheeler is supposed to be going from his MITRE Corporation office in Washington to his home in New Castle (near Wilmington, DE). However, I read another report that friends who dropped him at the Amtrak in DC thought he was taking a train to NY to take a holiday gift to his wife. (He and his wife have an apt in NY. They lead independent lives. She travels a lot for her Cambodian clothing import business. She was reportedly traveling when he disappeared.) Wheeler apparently never got to either of their homes and apparently took a hotel room in downtown Wilmington (Hotel du Pont). (Was Wheeler misdirecting people as to his whereabouts? Was he lying to his friends about going to NY?)

On Dec 29, Wheeler then proceeds with various erratic and inexplicable movements, some of it caught on security tapes, showing him disheveled and disoriented, and some reported by people he encountered who felt that he was in some kind of difficulty and offered help, which he refused. He refuses offer to call him a cab. He refuses money; says he "has money." None of the many people he meets report any evidence of alcohol consumption, and, at one point, he tells someone, "I am not drunk. I am not drunk," but he does seem, to everyone he meets, disoriented/in trouble. He is wearing only one shoe and carrying the other in his hand; his clothes have dirt smudges on them.

In one of these encounters, he said that his briefcase had been stolen. (Cell phone likely in briefcase, right?) But he makes no police report. He goes to the wrong parking garage to find his car and seems (on the vid) to be very frustrated and confused as to why it isn't there, and, in general, disheveled and disoriented. He tells the parking attendant that someone stole his briefcase, his parking ticket was in his briefcase and he can't find his car. After his death, there is a report that his briefcase WAS found locked in his car in a different parking lot. (Someone mugged him, took his briefcase, took the cell phone and planted it in his neighbor's house in New Castle, then returned the briefcase to his car and moved the car? Is this a misdirection scenario--not by him but by others plotting against him?)

(The vid comes from the New Castle County Courthouse parking garage called Colonial Parking. That was the wrong parking lot and is about halfway between downtown/the hotel and the Amtrak station parking lot in Wilmington. I don't know if the Amtrak lot was the right one--where his car was later found and where he had initially parked on Dec 13. Did he move his car in between? Did he think he did? Did someone else?)

On 12/30, he is seen on surveillance tapes, dressed differently, at 10th and Orange in Wilmington (near the hotel). He enters the Nemours Building, goes up to the offices of Connolly, Bove, Lodge & Hutz and asks to see the "managing partner." Before the receptionist can find someone to talk to him, he vanishes. (News report says an unnamed attorney--not the "managing partner"--states that Wheeler wanted to borrow money for train fare). (Why was he borrowing money--if that is true--when he told others he had money?)

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110111/NEWS/101110323&theme=WHEELER

He is last seen on 12/30, walking southeast on 11th from the Nemours Building across the Hotel du Pont valet parking area, crossing Market St., and heading for the city East Side. Much has been made of this being a "high crime" area, however, CLEARLY, the mugging (if there was one) took place the day BEFORE (and how many muggers--if he was the victim of a second mugging--bother to stuff their victims into a dumpster, let alone kill them? They usually take what goods they can and run.)

His body was found the next morning at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington in one of 10 dump trucks coming from Newark.

Re the cell phone in the neighbor's house: The police questioned a cab driver whose number was found in Wheeler's cell phone. The cab driver says he didn't give him a ride and doesn't know who he is. (Back to Wheeler's first stop, on Dec 29. He first goes into the Walgreen's "Happy Harry's" and asks the pharmacist, whom he knows, for a ride to his home in New Castle, a short distance away by car. The pharmacist says he can't do it, and offers to call him a cab, which Wheeler refuses. Was this some kind of set-up--which perhaps failed because Wheeler didn't take the bait? Was he already wary? WHY didn't he take a cab home? WHY does he refuse help at every step of the way to his murder? Was he afraid? Had he been drugged and was he confused because of it? Why did he leave this pharmacy and the lawyers' offices the next day, without getting help?)

A sharp-eyed reporter later noticed that the police had torn up some floorboards in his kitchen, when they were looking for the crime scene (which has yet to be identified). (Is that why he wouldn't or couldn't go home? He knew someone was waiting for him, to harm him? He'd started to realize that the mugging wasn't just a mugging and someone was after him? Or was he starting to remember that he had been drugged and interrogated, perhaps in his kitchen, with TV playing loud--and feared that place? Why didn't he go home, when he was repeatedly offered help in getting there?)

He had no health issues. He was fairly young (66). Of course, anyone can have a stroke and still be walking around. If that's all there is to this, how did he end up in a landfill? Confusion? If it was illness, all he had to say was, "Help me." People were reaching out to him. And the man had FRIENDS. He had just been emailing his West Point buddies yammering about sports. I'm sure any of them would have come to his aid, no matter the circumstances. Hell, he had thousands of buddies--given his work on the Vietnam Memorial. And he was one of the most well-connected people in Washington DC--adviser to presidents and National Security Councils. Why did he go into that law office and then leave before he spoke to someone? And did he really just want train fare? And why did he need train fare if he had money, as he said? And where was he going? (I don't think there is a train stop in New Castle where his home is. He needed a car ride to get there.)

The thing is just BAFFLING.

On the "smoke bomb" front, we're supposed to believe that all of this erratic and noticeably unusual (noticed by others and evident on the first vid) behavior had to do with him planting harmless smoke bombs in his neighbor's house? Nope. It doesn't wash. But as somebody's distraction plan? Yeah. A plan to misdirect the police and confuse the news reports and, not incidentally, to slander the dead man. That makes sense. There could even be several layers of misdirection here--that everything, including the mafia-like landfill conclusion--was made to look like less professional, less well-planned and less sophisticated than it really was--most of all to confuse the investigation.

And why haven't the police released ANY major details? Not the cause of death, not the tox report, not the weapon used, not the crime scene and no suspects. Also, this oddity about Wilmington City Council members complaining that their police are spending "too much time" on Wheeler's death really bothers me. How could anybody say that? (Note: The FBI is said to have become involved--those aces on political assassination!)

----------------------

Was Ashley Turton murdered, too?

Then we have the strange death of Ashley Turton, former aide to Rep. Richard Gephardt and Rep. Rosa De Lauro, and wife of Obama's liason to Congress, by vehicle fire, at her home in Washington DC, in a standing BMW in her own garage, a week after Wheeler's murder in nearby Wilmington, and two days after the AZ shootings, on the very day that Progress Energy--whom Ashley was lobbyist for--signed a $13 billion deal with Duke Energy, making Duke the biggest energy firm in the country. Duke is just completing the Duke Energy Aviation Facility (at Charlotte international airport) which may have ties to MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation Systems Development, and both could have ties to the $1.2 billion new DHS cyber-security facility just opened in Utah. As I said, Wheeler worked for MITRE and his stated field of work there was cyber-security.

More random (?) facts: Gabrielle Giffords recently sponsored a bill in Congress to ban sale of military aircraft on the open market. MITRE works on drone targeting systems. Duke's new airport facility could be testing such planes (as one blogger suggested, in my rounds of web sites). Dots: Giffords trying to restrict /stop some billion dollar aircraft deal. Turton right in the middle of the deal. Wheeler working for MITRE and acting secretive, and maybe misdirecting people and having misdirection used against him in a plot to murder him. Giffords shot, nearly fatally. Turton burned to death. Wheeler drugged, interrogated, stalked, murdered and thrown into a dumpster. Sounds like a spy novel. But, you know, good spy novels are based on things that really happen.

Could the secret cyber war that the Defense Dept was conducting, without informing the U.S. Senate, tie all of this together--Giffords, Turton, Wheeler, Duke Energy/Pioneer and MITRE?


The bird and fish die-off's theory

The law firm that Wheeler stopped at, where he is last seen, in Wilmington, is the one of the biggest patent attorney offices in the country, with 66 lawyers in three major locations, and pending patents on a host of intriguing items including transgenic plants, insecticide modified materials, plastics, adhesives and one fascinating item called "novel materials for organic electroluminescent devices." (See their list at www.faqs.org/patents/agn/41). Wheeler, you will recall, strongly opposed the use of bio/chem weapons. All those birds and fish dying was something else happening last week. There are theories about this--generally that Wheeler was going to whistleblow on AF bio/chem weapons testing. I'm neutral on this theory. The claimed report on it to Putin may be a hoax. The die-off's could well be AF activity, but tied to Wheeler's death? I don't know. I'd say it's possible, but so many things are possible at this point--including a 9/11 connection through Ptech, partner of MITRE.

Note: Raw Story reports that there was yet another political death in Arizona--Christopher Smith, a Republican legislative aide--dead of a gunshot wound in his car, in Phoenix, in mid-December.

See my Comment #12 at the following thread for a few more thoughts, after four Republican politicians in AZ resigned in fear for their lives, and about the gunshot death of Christopher Smith. Is there some kind of war going on behind the scenes, between the right and the far right, or between different corporate rulers/war profiteers? Sure a lot of shocking death happening and the victims are not all "liberals."

(Comment # 12) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x184343


"Conspiracy theories"

I've had this phrase thrown at me already, for suggesting that AZ may have been a "distraction" to get the spotlight off the Wheeler murder investigation. i'm rather sorry I made that suggestion, although I still think it's possible. The AZ shooter made a special effort to spray bullets everywhere, even at a child, guaranteeing headlines and wall-to-wall coverage for weeks. And there is a feel about the Wheeler murder that something went wrong. (Something like: He was interrogated, forced to give something up but escaped when he went to get whatever it was--he'd been drugged, thus the disorientation; and when his murderers realized he was free, they hunted him down and finished him off?) If something went wrong with the murder plan, that might require a big "distraction" while the murderers cleaned their trail--planted false clues, baffled investigations, etc. The media spotlight was on Wheeler's murder, at first, then it was abruptly turned off, because of AZ. I know it's far out, suggesting that the "bad guys" may have zombies they can activate for something like this. But I do think it's possible.

However, when I made this suggestion, I had not been aware of Giffords' membership on so many defense and security committees in the House, nor of her bill about banning the sale of military aircraft on the open market, nor of these very big deals going down involving aviation corps and facilities and security, nor of this item about a secret cyber war. She may have been a specific target.

And maybe the AZ horror has nothing whatever to do with Wheeler's death, or Turton's death, and Wheeler's and Turton's deaths have nothing to do with each other. That, too, is possible. (The police have said that Wheeler was murdered. That has not been determined as to Turton.) Obama or one of the other speakers at the AZ Memorial yesterday said that we long to make sense of horrors like that, and we may never be able to. It's certainly true that our minds want to make order where maybe there isn't any--partly because that's what we do as humans, and partly because we feel so vulnerable amidst violence and chaos.

We have to keep an open mind, but also not bury our heads in the sand. People CAN get homicidal when billions of dollars are at issue and recent history has shown us that some of our leaders are without conscience and will do anything for money and power. I'm keeping an open mind on all of this. I hope the above information is useful to DUers and others and that these many mysteries, involving the suffering of many people and the loss of many people, are solved.